Copenhagen Green Climate Fund

Our assessment: "The Durban Conference is a turning point in the climate change negotiations as even though developing countries have won victories, these have come after much acrimony and fight. At Durban the world has agreed to urgent action, but now it is critical that this action to reduce emissions must be based on equity. India's proposal on equity has been included in the work plan for the next conference. It is clear from this conference that the fight to reduce emissions effectively in an unequal world will be even more difficult in the years to come. But it is a conference, which has put the issue of equity back into the negotiations. It is for this reason an important move ahead."

The climate talk at Durban is heading for a stalemate. I do not see any major breakthrough other than some sort of “Durban declaration / mandate” to take the negotiation process forward. We might also have some decision on Green Climate Fund and its architecture, which the host South Africa and the African Union is pushing for.

Durban, December 7: Today, Wedsensday 7 December, 2011, the high-level segment will discuss the Green Climate Fund (GCF). Ministers will put their wise heads together and decide the fate of the GCF, which has had quite a stormy year since its inception at the Cancun CoP in 2010. Their goal is to create what is called a ‘cover decision’ that adopts the governing instrument and puts in place an interim arrangement until the GCF is finally operational.

Durban, December 5: Q from The Independent: Any circumstances in which China will go for a legally binding global deal to cut emissions?

So far, multilateral talks have been going on for 20 years. Many countries have spent great efforts. The UNFCCC and KP are legally binding documents, all parties are working hard to implement consensus in the Copenhagen Accord. We need a review of all these efforts. We need to base future decisions on current actions and what has been achieved so far. We will consider 2020 only after that.

At 1 o’clock on December 3, 2011, halfway through CoP 17, the President of CoP 17 held a plenary to take stock of the work done so far. She first thanked the delegates for the “flexibility” they’d shown so far, thus “allowing work to happen”. She was pleased to inform the plenary that work on the Green Climate Fund (GCF) had progressed a lot: indeed, today was a crucial day in the GCF negotiations, such that the Chair wasn’t able to attend the ‘informal stocktaking’, as this particular briefing has been termed. She informed that after 2 rounds of informal consultations on GCF, “a number of countries are willing to accept a report”.

Durban, December 1: Arguments and stalemates are a passé at UN climate change conferences. UN’s 17th Conference of Parties on Climate Change (COP17), being hosted at Durban, South Africa saw its first impasse after three days of the negotiations, when a group of countries from disparate economic standing stopped the adoption of a report that could help set up the $100 billion a year fund to combat the effects of global warming in developing countries.

November 30, 2011: India and China cannot be blamed for lack of progress in the global climate change negotiation, a senior negotiator from the Africa Group said today. Speaking to Down to Earth, at the sidelines of the COP17 in Durban, Seyni Alfa Nafo, a negotiator from Mali and the spokesperson of the Africa Group said: “India and China are doing their fair share,” and that developing countries combined efforts to reduce green house gas emissions was more than that of the developed countries.